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How We Unexpectedly Got 60K Users in 60 Hours (2012)

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Re: How We Unexpectedly Got 60K Users in 60 Hours (2012)

#21

Post by danso »

The pivotal moment that the OP talks about is being covered by Mashable, here:

http://mashable.com/2012/05/01/brandyourself-google/

The claim that the service can tell you who Googled you is partially true...if someone Googles you and if they happen to click through to your BrandYourself page, then BrandYourself can guess the IP against a list of publicly known servers.

This is a useful service for those who can't set up their own website (and set a tracking script)...though let's face it, most readers were thinking that the service could conclusively show you any Google search.

Re: How We Unexpectedly Got 60K Users in 60 Hours (2012)

#23

Post by sejje »

300 wrote: post #14

It's interesting to see. If nothing more, I at least learned(again) that powerful marketing is the key for successful product/service - front page on HN/TechCrunch/Mashable/etc is definitely something that every startup should focus on in the beginning.

I absolutely disagree with your last statement. Many niche startups--those without mass appeal--have no reason to focus on TechCrunch. There may be some all-important blog in their field, though.

Think Patio11 focused on getting BCC on the front page of Mashable? I highly doubt it.

Re: How We Unexpectedly Got 60K Users in 60 Hours (2012)

#25

Post by fmax30 »

From the headline I thought this was going to be about scaling your application. Any way pretty amazing slides and nice tips . I am assuming they are looking at the referrer to get the last visited page (the referrer) . And also wouldn't the tracking only work for their own page (the one created on their own website ).

Re: How We Unexpectedly Got 60K Users in 60 Hours (2012)

#26

Post by jonathanjaeger »

Maro wrote: post #7

Numbers of registrations is a vanity metric. How many used the core product? How many retained? How many converted to paying? How many told their friends?

That's definitely true, but it's not a like a fly-by-night social network that won't retain any users. They got users because of a specific service that seems very valuable in certain cases and the virality was relevant to their service. So even if conversion to paid customer was low, it's still a pretty big funnel compared to a startup offering something similar and grinding it out to get a top-line funnel of 500 signups.

Re: How We Unexpectedly Got 60K Users in 60 Hours (2012)

#27

Post by sparkman55 »

pdx wrote: post #16
arbuge wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On that note, how exactly are they reaching conclusions on where Googlers who are Googling you actually work? (i.e. their actual company name, not just the physical location their IP address maps to).

I second this question. What are the best databases out there, that map IP addresses of office space, not web servers, to company names? I see some products out there that purport to do this, but they aren't saying where they're getting their data. I'm really curious how they are creating such a database. LinkedIn, for example, would have such a db, since people surf LinkedIn from work. However, they're not granting…

We used a company called LeadLander for this when we were in the B2B space. Since qualifying leads and negotiating a deal were harder than lead identification for us, this was mostly a vanity / fun project, although it was successful in motivating us.

Re: How We Unexpectedly Got 60K Users in 60 Hours (2012)

#28

Post by walden42 »

ecaradec wrote: post #4

The 60k users 60 hours is just the end result, but the slideshow is not about quick results as I expected : it's about iterating around different things to see what sticks until you find something that works. "Presenting one feature at a time" is a quite useful thing because it allows you to talk about yourself regularly with a slightly different angle and it create news all the time.

> it's about iterating around different things to see what sticks until you find something that works.

There's no other way. I found a lot of useful nuggets in the article, nevertheless.

Re: How We Unexpectedly Got 60K Users in 60 Hours (2012)

#29

Post by patrickambron »

ecaradec wrote: post #4

The 60k users 60 hours is just the end result, but the slideshow is not about quick results as I expected : it's about iterating around different things to see what sticks until you find something that works. "Presenting one feature at a time" is a quite useful thing because it allows you to talk about yourself regularly with a slightly different angle and it create news all the time.

Hi, I'm the author of the slideshare/founder of the company. You are right, before the actual surge, there was a lot of upfront work understanding how to build our product and how to tell our story. That said, once you have the right product with the right viral loops we learned that taking an extremely focused story (check out this ONE feature) to the right audience accelerates growth like crazy

Re: How We Unexpectedly Got 60K Users in 60 Hours (2012)

#30

Post by patrickambron »

manmal wrote: post #15
mbesto wrote: post #12

There's a lot of good information the slides, but for the quick and dirty: 1. They found one feature that a lot of people enjoyed (some would call this a MVP) and lots of people shared it 2. Mashable picked up on it and then other publications did. 3. Massive growth. The main takeaway that I always tell startup people: 1. Marketing works, don't neglect it. (in this case PR worked extremely well) 2. Don't do marketing…

I'd call that USP (Unique Selling Proposition) rather than MVP - the MVP would be the minimal product incorporating the USP.

Exactly. We already had the MVP--the key here was boiling down our product into a value proposition people could quickly understand. Rather than saying "we can match an ISP to a location and company" we said "you can figure out if an employer or ex gf googles you"
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